Volume 2

Practical observations on the management and diseases of children. With additional observations and a biographical notice of the author / by Thomas Alcock.

  • Haden, Charles Thomas, 1786-1824
Date:
1827
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Practical observations on the management and diseases of children. With additional observations and a biographical notice of the author / by Thomas Alcock. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    a cunning little fellow he is,’ without the truth flashing across her mind, that such capacity might be turned to better account.* Let us, only for a moment, consider how in- formation comes into the mind. No one, at the present day, thinks of considering, that any of our knowledge is intuitive, except indeed, such as immediately relates to the preservation of our lives and species. | A child, by instinct, that is, perhaps by the smell, for instinct is, at the best, but an unsatis- factory expression, clings to its mother, and sucks when put to her breast ; but it probably gets very little other knowledge from nature. It possesses, indeed, the power of being acted on by impres- * In Nicholson’s Philosophical Journal, Vol. XV. p. 42 and 18],, are two papers from a father, who writes the history of his child’s life for the first four months; and these papers contain, probably, | the only attempt extant, to describe the early mental efforts of infants. As such, they deserve considerable attention, although the imagination of a fond parent, may perhaps have drawn the picture in stronger colours than future experience will verify. The writer concludes his first paper by making some general observations on the surprise, which such facts as he relates must produce; and especially says, that “Persuasion, promises, lies, meum et tuum, individual character as to benevolence, and its reverse from physiognomy, and as to morals, from the behaviour, preference of other infants from similarity of action, jests, mockery, theatrical simulation in the management of dolls and puppets, and a prodigious number of other compound associations, occupy the minds of infants, long before the expiration of the first six months of their existence.” c2